Paul Ryan’s Paradox

It remains to be seen how the voters will react to Mitt Romney’s choice of running mate, but one thing is certain: no politician better represents the conflict between the aspirations and the reality of the modern Republican Party better than Paul Ryan.

The Wisconsin congressman has devoted his career to striking a difficult balance: bringing the promised benefits of the federal welfare state in line with the country’s historic tax burden. While this seems straightforward enough, in practice both Republicans and Democrats have wanted to avoid the trade-offs involved.

Democrats argue that ever-growing spending commitments will only require additional tax dollars from the wealthiest 1 percent. Republicans assert that taxes can remain low so long as waste, fraud, and abuse are removed from government spending. The predictable result of this mathematically challenged policy mix has been chronic deficits, now swelling to unsustainable levels.

So Ryan has tried to tackle the biggest long-term drivers of the national debt, which also happen to be the popular entitlement programs considered the “third rail” of American politics. Touch them, legend and recent history have it, and your political career will die. Ryan has made this thankless task more complicated still by stipulating that his reforms have to be politically possible and arithmetically sound at the same time.

There are legitimate, often technical disputes as to whether Ryan’s plans pass either of these tests. But there is little doubt Ryan has outlined some of the most detailed budget and entitlement reforms of any major political figure who is both influential and subject to the whims of the voters. Ryan even represents a congressional district in a swing state that voted for Obama in 2008.

Over the past decade, Ryan has risen to the chairmanship of the House Budget Committee while championing deep cuts in discretionary spending and gradually converting Medicare into a premium support system. What started as the Ryan-authored “Roadmap for America’s Future,” much admired by free-market think tanks but with few congressional supporters, became with some modifications the official budget document approved by the full House of Representatives.

Even in the Democratic-controlled Senate, Ryan’s budget has received more votes than the other alternatives. Only Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey’s proposal—which relies on Ryan for Medicare reform—did better. Obama’s spending plans were rejected 99 to 0. Unlike the House, the Senate hasn’t passed a budget in over 1,200 days.

In a relatively short time, Ryan has not only built a national GOP fiscal policy consensus, he has become it ablest and most articulate defender. And unlike many other green-eyeshade Republicans, Ryan connects what looks like austerity to jobs and economic growth. Romney had already endorsed the principles behind Ryan’s plans. Now he has their best salesman on the ticket.

Those are the Republican aspirations: limited government, a manageable debt-to-GDP ratio, solvent federal programs, and rapid economic growth. But on most of these counts, the record and the reality have been different. The George W. Bush years in particular were characterized by persistent overspending and only episodic growth.

Back then, Ryan was following a very different roadmap. He not only voted for but helped pass Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit that was the largest new entitlement since the Great Society and which added trillions to the rickety healthcare program’s already considerable unfunded liabilities. He passionately exhorted his House Republican colleagues to vote for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and then was one of only 20 to actually do so. Ryan supported bailing out the auto industry as well as Wall Street.

Nearly everyone who knows Ryan believes he is genuinely passionate about parting the sea of red ink threatening to engulf the country. He took the political risk of associating himself with a far-reaching Medicare plan even before Obama was elected. Yet he voted for most of the big-government initiatives of the Bush era. Ryan still argues that these were the least bad of the available unpleasant options, telling the New Yorker that the period made him “miserable.”

Ryan is less conflicted about his votes for the unfunded Iraq War and the Patriot Act, followed up with Libya war funding and the National Defense Authorization Act under Obama. The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes—who was one of the few journalists privy to the Ryan pick before the news broke—reported that Ryan has in recent months been briefed by Elliot Abrams and “surge” architect Robert Kagan. Eli Lake confirmed in a Daily Beast story with the subhead, “Romney’s VP pick tilts his ticket closer to the neocons on questions about America’s role in the world.”

Like many Republicans, Ryan moves easily from the fact that national defense is the federal government’s preeminent constitutional power—and most fundamental moral duty—to the belief that the fatal conceit stops at the water’s edge. But he is most interested in domestic policy, and he can count. In a generally hawkish speech to the Alexander Hamilton Society, Ryan acknowledged the country’s fiscal challenges could sap its military power and counseled “a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in other regions.” (Though he also suggested that retrenchment means “we should reduce ourselves to membership on a long list of mediocre has-beens,” which is rather short on healthy humility.)

How much influence would Ryan really have in a Romney administration? Dick Cheney’s power was unusual and probably unprecedented, owing to his status as an elder statesman who served under a president who was detached from policy details (neither attribute would apply to Ryan). Even in his case, the results were mixed. Cheney certainly left a mark on the Bush administration’s foreign policy and was a much more eloquent defender of the Iraq War than the commander-in-chief.

Yet the war itself was still unpopular and Cheney became one of the most hated figures in the administration. He was largely sidelined during the second term. There are many more examples of Republican administrations employing more conservative vice presidents to please the base in the absence of delivering tangible results to the right. That was Richard Nixon’s role under Dwight Eisenhower, Spiro Agnew’s under Nixon, Dan Quayle’s under George H.W. Bush, and it was sure to become Sarah Palin’s if John McCain had somehow managed to get himself elected.

A frustrated Vice President Ryan could make some waves if he was unhappy with the pace of government-cutting in a Romney administration. He would enter the vice presidency with far more influence among conservative elites than any of the above figures. Some of that influence is starting to trickle down to the grassroots, as evidenced by the angry Iowa Republican who chewed out Newt Gingrich for calling the Ryan plan “right-wing social engineering.” The fellow bluntly informed the former House speaker, “You’re an embarrassment to our party.” A successful campaign would only improve Ryan’s standing with the Republican rank-and-file.

But there is nothing in Ryan’s record under George W. Bush that should give confidence he would use that leverage. The entrepreneurial, independent Ryan has been much more in evidence since Obama has been president amidst a leadership vacuum in the Republican Party.

Ryan’s contradictions are the GOP’s. The party of limited government, lean budgets, and robust civil society often delivers anything but, except perhaps in comparison to Obama’s banal party of the Life of Julia. The man who has done more than any other member of the Republican leadership team to move the Tea Party from inchoate anti-Obama rage to a potentially achievable policy agenda voted for much of the spending that gave rise to the Tea Party in the first place.

In that sense, Romney’s pick could hardly be improved upon. The question for Ryan is one that faces the party as a whole: If entrusted with power, will you realize your aspirations or repeat your past results?

W. James Antle III is associate editor of The American Spectator and a contributing editor of The American Conservative. Follow him on Twitter.

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24 Responses to Paul Ryan’s Paradox

The Bible tells us that by their ACTIONS we shall know them. Based on his actions, Mr. Ryan does not appear to be all committed to deficit reduction, excuses/explanations for his votes on TARP and Medicare Part D notwithstanding. We note also Ryan has consistently ruled out cuts to defense spending. This despite the fact that the IG report noted that the F-35 program cannot be brought under control and the whole DOD acquisition process is a mess.

What we forget about last year’s NDAA was the inclusion, supported by people like John McCain of Fifth Amendment destroying language regarding the indefinite detention of Americans on American soil without access to a lawyer or a judge. Ryan’s support for that bill with that language in it is indeed worrisome. Conservatives need to make a repeal of that language perhaps their highest priority but with Ryan who voted for it now on the ticket that is probably not going to happen.

I think it is clear that guys like Ryan really have no problem with high debt and deficits. The issue is how they are created. When they are created trying to shore up the economy, he is against them. When they are created helping the poor or elderly, he is against them. When they are created because of tax breaks for the rich, he loves them. When they are created because of an unnecessary war, he loves them. Ryan is a hypocrite…and he is a perfect representative of the Republican party.

I don’t know where you get the idea that Ryan is a Tea Party hero. He’s not my hero, God knows.

We’re not. By his past statements and the indisputable evidence of his voting record, Ryan is part of the problem. It is clear though that some people are trying to foster the impression that Tea Party voters should feel appeased by Ryan’s presence on the ticket.

spot on. “He not only voted for but helped pass Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit that was the largest new entitlement since the Great Society and which added trillions to the rickety healthcare program’s already considerable unfunded liabilities. He passionately exhorted his House Republican colleagues to vote for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) and then was one of only 20 to actually do so. Ryan supported bailing out the auto industry as well as Wall Street.” He should be Obama’s running mate. He is another example of the “I was for it until I was against it” GOP doublespeak.

If Ryan’s record were the exact same, with a single exception- that he now repudiates the Iraq War— example-as Walter “freedom fries” Jones came to do,(ditto if you wish,Afpak)– Ryan would NOT have been chosen, nor would he be being promoted by one or either of the Elite’s bought-off wings.

In addition to Ryan’s record of voting for every G.W. Bush big spending, big government law, Ryan is an opponent of patriotic immigration.
But of course he and his family get to live on the same block where he grew up; according to city-date.com Janesville, WI is 88.8% White.
I live in Texas and many of us can not reside in the neighborhoods where we once grew up. But living in neighborhoods that aren’t impacted by third worlders is typical of proponents of open immigration lawmakers. George W. Bush didn’t build his Dallas home in west Dallas or north Oak Cliff.

On one side, a man steeped in the radically Biblical Civil Rights movement, and a member of the denomination among the fully functioning congregations of which is the church founded at Plymouth Rock by the Pilgrim Fathers. His spear is borne by a man in whom the Irish and German lines of American Catholicism meet.

On the other side, a polytheist and anthropomorphist who believes that God was once a man, that men can become gods, that Jesus was the natural son of Mary and of the God-Man Adam, and that both Father and Son were and are polygamously married, just like the widowers who continue to be “sealed for all eternity” to new wives in Mormon temples right down to the present day. A man who, unlike his opponent, has brought about the public funding of abortion and continues to profit personally from it.

And if a President sworn in on the Book of Mormon were to die, then who would succeed him? Why, none other than a Vice-President sworn in on a copy of Atlas Shrugged. See into what the Republican Party has been turned by neoconservatism. The old school of American mainline Protestantism has been removed as its frame of reference and replaced with the witterings of Ludwig von Mises, Leo Strauss, Max Shachtman and Ayn Rand.

Creating the space for every fruitcake from sea to shining sea: Nile Gardiner and the rest of the Washington Times Moonies, Romney and the Mormons (lining up Gardiner for National Security Adviser – then do we finally get to strip him of his British citizenship?), Sharron Angle and the Scientologists, Christine O’Donnell and the dabblers in witchcraft, Rand Paul and the worshipers of whatever Aqua Buddha might be, the Dominionists, the “Christian Zionists”, and all the rest of them.

As to Medicare Part D: Before the Donks got through reaming out the “donut hole” it was a model of how to move entitlements toward free-market solutions. For that reasons the braying socialists hated it even more than you did.

As far as TARP: let’s remember that it was sold to us as a modern version of the Resolution Trust Co. program, which worked quite well and made a profit in the end. The fault of conservatives in Congress was that they didn’t put adequate controls on it to ensure that it could not be misused, and did not have the numbers to impeach the president when it was.

True – a paradox. But just as true – perfection is the enemy of good. Right now, whether tea party loyalists and traditional conservatives want to believe it or not, Ryan is by far and away the best at articulating the case for limited government while at the same time preserving a safety net. Perhaps there are those who admire conservative political ideologies and at the same time understand the virtue of pragmatism.

Steve Dankle: Your premise is false. Ryan is nothing but a charlatan. He was a lapdog for Bush when it suited him, and now he huffs and puffs when he knows none of his policies will ever make it into law. It makes sense that Romney would pick Ryan. Only Ryan has just as many positions on every issue as Romney does.

Conservatives don’t vote for “hope”, but most conservatives nowadays would be liberal Democrats from the past.

NJCommuter: How is that “model” working out given that Medicare Part D unfunded mandate is running into hundreds of billions. The Bushists also made sure that Medicare cannot bargain over drug costs. The Decider and the “conservatives” turned out to be socialists. And now one of those losers wants to be the VP. No wonder they call the GOP the stupid party.

Say rather that they were not able to protect their demonstration/seduction/compromise against the Pelosi-Reid machine, for which even the Constitution seems to be less than a speed bump.

When it comes to bargaining, when the government ‘bargains’, it calls the tune. Look at how other nations set a take-it-or-leave it price for the drug companies, forcing those companies to recoup their R&D costs in the USA. If we narrow it further, costs will go up for everyone not on the program as one group is forced by government interference to subsidize another.

Njcommuter, when Medicare Part D was past the Republicans were a majority in both houses. It gets old listening the narrative fallacies of the delusional right. You really need to stop making excuses. Ryan voted for big government every opportunity he had. He can say what he wants now, but he is a big spending statist at heart. He even support the TARP bank nationalization, when the large majority of his party said no.

NJCommuter: Not necessarily. Seniors do not have monopsonist power for prescription drugs. The analogy you provided is false because in those countries the government is the buyer of medicine for the entire population not just seniors. BTW, for most medical services Medicare actually sets rates of what doctors and hospitals can charge for them. Why not for prescription drugs?

Let’s face it the prescription drug bill was a way for The Decider to bribe seniors for his re-election in 2004. Ryan aided and abetted this socialist claptrap, and now dances to a different tune. I know exactly how this guy will vote when the chips are down (think TARP). I am beginning to think conservatives are falling for “hope” as well.

Once again, what Ryan bought is not what the country ended up with. Medicare Part D was changed by the Donks to weaken the cost controls, which required that the beneficiary pony up some of the cash. TARP was pitched as one thing and implemented as another–and a Donk-run Congress was complicit.

And the government should no more be setting prices for drugs than it should be for doctors. Ryan’s approach–put the insurance out for bids and allow seniors to pick the plans, while covering the cost up to the second-lowest bid–is not perfect but it’s better than what we have now. It will work better still with real tort reform, since the malpractice and liability system eats up a third of the healthcare dollar (NOT counting what’s paid out to victims).

We can argue about the motivation for Medicare Part D. You say it was a bribe for seniors. I say it was a push to move the system closer to a market-based solution. Maybe it was both. A good politician (who may or may not be a politician who is good) should play all the angles available. And getting people ‘hooked’ on a market-based solution might not be such a bad thing.

How was TARP pitched as one thing and implemented as another? The very concept of that legislation was anti-free market regardless of how it got implemented. The people on the right who voted or signed that bill are statists.

I have to dispel the myth about the Prescription drug bill as a market-based solution. It is not. A market-based solution doesn’t need subsidies to artificially increase demand. A market-based solution is where supply and demand freely come together to determine prices. How is that possible when the government subsidizes demand? Calling it a free-market solution is like saying food stamps are a free market solution because you take your subsidies to privately owned stores. And food stamps haven’t solved the hunger problem among the poor, just like this “market-based” prescription drug bill won’t solve anything either. All it will do, just like food stamps, is build a bloated unpaid government program with lots of mouth to feed.

It is not like this is the only sin Paul Ryan has committed. He has voted for many other monstrocities like No Child Left Behind, Sarbanes-Oaxley, every single deficit enhancing Bush budget, supported nation building and Iraq war, etc. etc. Let’s put it this way – every chance he had to support left-wing philosophy, he supported it giddily. You know what that makes him – a donk.

Republicans suffer from the worst form of amnesia. The Tea Party came into existence out of disgust for politicians like Ryan and now he is one of them? If this is true, then the Tea Party is just as fraudulent as the Democrat or Republican party.